George Trumbull Ladd

“ But may we pursue psychology as a "natural science" without postulate of a soul, and without any metaphysical implicate or postulate whatsoever? Possibly: I am not prepared to say that we cannot; but the way is straight and narrow and there are few, if any, who succeed in finding it. Formally to abjure all metaphysics, and then really to admit no end of doubtful metaphysics of physics — as Mr. Huxley and Dr. Maudsley, and so many others are constantly doing — is scarcely consistent with adherence to the principles of pure science. No one has pointed this out more clearly than Professor James. ”

“ The roadway for the entire two miles from Omori to Ikegami was lined with either the more permanent shops of the village through which we were passing or with booths extemporised for the occasion, all gaily lighted with lamps and coloured lanterns, and so thronged with surging crowds that independent progress was nearly or quite impossible. Indeed, when we reached the one hundred stone steps which ascend the hill on whose top the buildings of the monastery are standing, there was no other way than to allow ourselves to be slowly borne upward by the weight of the human mass. ”

“ Koreans and Japanese have lived together in complete amity and good fellowship in the past, and there is no good reason why they should not live side by side on the best of terms in the future. Certainly none in the sentiment of dislike on one side, for the origin of which we must go back nearly three centuries. The practical difficulty, the dislike which really counts, is of more modern origin. Korea and Japan have been jostled together, as it were, by two wars in recent times, and the weaker of the two has suffered—a circumstance to be regretted, no doubt, but still inevitable. ”

“ The most beautiful and perfect of the gardens of Japan, in the old-fashioned Chino-Japanese style, which I have ever seen, are the Kōrakuen in Tokyo, and the Katsura-no-Rikyū in Kyoto. The former was originally the garden of the Prince of Mito, the site of whose mansion is now occupied by the Koishikawa Arsenal. Thus the quiet beauty of the art of the “Old Japan” is brought into contrast with the preparations for displaying its strength of the “New Japan.” ”

“ He wished his countrymen to remember that the Korean problem was not political, not one of the successful exploitation of a weaker nation by a stronger, but a question of that policy which should be for the highest interests and best welfare of both nations. The need of the hour was the need of men—both Japanese and Koreans—who could stand in the places of responsibility and influence, and discharge their duties faithfully, honestly, unselfishly. The work which he had undertaken to do in Korea was only a beginning; and on account of advancing age he must soon let it go from his hand. ”

“ Nevertheless, we do most confidently believe that modern psychology is amply entitled to be called a science; and even — if you please — "a natural science." It is a science, because it has a sufficiently well-defined field of phenomena, which it undertakes to describe and to explain ; and because it has ample data, not only for description but also for explanation of these phenomena. All the states of consciousness, as such, constitute this field; they offer the problems to the psychologist. ”

“ But the eagerness with which these humble men (for, unlike-the case with us, the great majority of the common-school teachers are males,—many of them in middle life and beyond) avail themselves of every opportunity to see and hear anything which may help them in their work, is both encouraging and pathetic. Where in the United States, for example, could a voluntary class of more than eight hundred teachers be held together for twenty hours of lectures on education,—each session more than filling up the period between four and six o’clock of the afternoon, during the busiest part of term-time? ”

“ If I had been of some small service, I had received a much more than adequate reward in the opportunity of seeing an interesting side of human life which had hitherto been, for the most part, unfamiliar to me. I also expressed my belief in a universal and omnipotent Spirit of Righteousness, who shapes the destinies of men and of nations, and who uses us all in His service—if we so will—to our own real well-being and to the good of humanity. God has so bound together [140] Japan and Korea, both physically and politically, that their interests cannot be separated, whether for weal or for woe. ”

“ When we remember what risks his nation ran, under his leadership, in order to solve peacefully the vexed question of foreign trade and foreign residence, may we not also remind ourselves of the propriety that somewhat more of the same spirit of chivalry should govern our conduct in dealing with the same question, now that a half-century of continued friendship has bound together the two nations, whose representatives—the one so patiently, the other so bravely—solved it in that older time of agitation and threatened disaster? ”

“ For Professor James holds, as we all do, that the "old psychology" was relatively lacking in scientific quality. It described and classified; but it did not explain, by pointing out, and reducing to general terms, the concomitant and antecedent conditions of the phenomena. How greatly disappointed we are, therefore, when an advocate of the new "natural science" of psychology restricts all legitimate explanation, by his very conception of such science, to one class of conditions only, — and these by far the most obscure and unattainable of all. ”

“ And now the ghostly forms fall upon their knees, and the woman, as though to propitiate Heaven, magnifies the courage and fidelity of the hero and recites his death-song in the recent battle. At this the chorus break out into loud lamentations that the entire family of so famous a hero has perished and that no soul is left alive to pray for the souls departed. After a period of kneeling, with their hands covering their faces in an attitude of hopeless mourning, the ghosts rise and slowly move off the stage; and the first act of the drama comes to an end. ”

“ In spite of these facts, however, the main outlines of the development of Korea are unmistakable. Its history has been, for the ruling classes, one long, monotonous, almost unbroken record of misrule and misfortune; and for the people an experience of poverty, oppression, and the shedding of blood. That they have endured at all as the semblance of a nation, although not “as an organized state in the modern sense,” has been due chiefly to these two causes: first, to a certain native quality of passive resistance, varied by periods of frenzied uprising against both native and foreign oppressors ”

“ In Korea, as well as in India and China, this vulgar and degrading superstition is connected with ancestor worship—namely, that the welfare of the living and the dead, in this world and in the next, is somehow inseparably bound up with begetting and bearing, or somehow possessing, a male descendant. No heavier curse is put on woman; no subtler form of temptation to lust for man; no more burdensome restriction on society; and no more efficient check to a spiritual faith and a spiritual development exists among the civilized peoples of the world than this ancient but unworthy superstition. ”

“ For have not the greatly and permanently influential benefactors of the race always been teachers? Were not Confucius, and Sakya-Muni, and Jesus, all teachers? And in Japan itself, only a few years ago, did not a certain man who had refused offers of government positions deemed higher by most, in order that he might remain a teacher of Japanese youth, when his work was ended, have his coffin attended to its resting-place by ten thousand of his fellow citizens of all classes, walking bareheaded through the rain? ”

“ As to foreign relations, and as to those Koreans who were plotting with foreigners against the Japanese, his attitude was of necessity entirely different. He was against these selfish intrigues; he was pledged to this attitude of opposition by loyalty to his own Emperor, to his own country, and, indeed, to the best good fortune for Korea itself. Japan was henceforth bound to protect herself and the Koreans against the evil influence and domination of foreign nations who cared only to exploit the country in their own selfish interests or to the injury of the Japanese. ”

“ The temple groves on all the many holidays are thronged with crowds, [155] who combine their unintelligent and not even half-hearted worship with a much more intelligent and heartfelt appreciation of the beauties of nature. Indeed, with these multitudes, the worship of the departed ancestor in the family shrine in-doors, and the worship of nature in the open air constitutes their only religion.
How profoundly influenced is all the art and all the national life of the Japanese by this love and æsthetical appreciation of all forms of natural beauty, it is not necessary to say in detail. ”

“ But less than an hour later we were lodged in comfortable quarters at Miss Sontag’s house, and were having a first experience of the almost alarming stillness of a Korean night. Even in the midst of a multitude of more than two hundred thousand souls, the occasional bark of a dog and the unceasing rat-tat of the ironing-sticks of some diligent housewife, getting her lord’s clothing of a dazzling whiteness for next day’s parade, are the only sounds that are sure to strike the ear and soothe to sleep brains which must be prevented from working on things inward, if they sleep soundly at all. ”

“ It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that the enjoyment of the Japanese garden in a social way is confined to the wealthy and the nobles with their large estates. All over the country the multitude of the people love nature and have it abundantly at their command to enjoy in quiet ways. In Tokyo thousands of artisans and common labourers and coolies, with wives and children, will trudge for miles to view the plum or cherry blossoms, or to see the morning-glories open at four o’clock of a Summer morning. ”

“ If the criticisms of the dealings of Japan with Korea were much more just and severe, they would not be likely to involve international complications of any serious magnitude. Only China remains—huge, mysterious, incalculable both for good and for evil, a vast overhanging cloud, with here and there a flash of lightning or streak of sunlight shining through. But for some time to come it is altogether unlikely that the Celestial Empire will be able, however willing, to re-establish any claims to a dominating influence, much less to a restored suzerainty, in the Korean peninsula. ”

“ At the period of first excitement over the action of the School Board of San Francisco, in 1906, a Japanese friend of mine, a professor in the Imperial University of Tokyo, who had spent some fifteen years of his earlier life in this country, remarked to me with extreme concern and sadness, that now his countrymen were wounded by us at their most sensitive point. “Nothing else,” he added, “do all our common people prize so much, for their children and for themselves, as education.” ”

“ The apartments, which were united into one so-called palace in the reign of Suk-jong (1694-1720) appear to be most distinctively Korean and are unlike any other buildings which I have ever seen. The rooms are small and rambling; and the screens between them are decorated with those geometrical patterns which are so ancient and so nearly universal wherever architecture has reached a certain stage of development. The ceilings are low and devoid of decoration, but are made pleasing by being everywhere "beamed-over." This palace, too, has not escaped its history of violence and its bath of blood. ”

“ In Japan every national festival and, indeed, almost every form of social gathering or species of entertainment partakes more or less of the character of a garden party. At the remotest and meanest tea-house in the mountains or by the sea, if the weather permits, you take your cup of tea where you can look upon a scene which nature or man has made into a work of art. ”

“ In manufactures and every form of industry, in trade and commerce, in the devising and management of the means of communication, in education, science, and literature—everywhere in these lines of peaceful national activity there is a great deficiency of trained and trustworthy helpers, even for the supply of her own immediate needs. In all these matters of national interest and import, the cry of her leaders is for the right sort of men. How, then, shall Japan at the present juncture supply in sufficient numbers [458] the workmen to meet the needs of the hour in the reform and uplift of Korea? ”

“ It is, indeed, a truth which cannot be argued with the Westerner,—easily or without embarrassment, for lack of a sufficient standing upon common ground. It is a truth which must be profoundly felt. Japan, perhaps more than any other civilised nation, is constantly under the prevailing influence of a belief in what Mr. Hearn is pleased—not altogether aptly—to call “ghosts.” These are the ghosts—I should rather say, the felt spiritual presences—“of great warriors and heroes and rulers and teachers, who lived and loved and died hundreds or thousands of years ago.” ”

“ Russia secured her predominance by pandering to the worst elements in Korean officialdom. Japan holds it by strength of arm, but she holds it in such a way as to give promise of something better. The word reform never passed the Russian’s lips. It is the insistent cry of Japan. The welfare of the Korean people never showed its head above the Russian horizon, but it fills the whole vision of Japan; not from altruistic motives mainly, but because the prosperity of Korea and that of Japan rise and fall with the same tide. ”

“ The hour found such a man in the Japanese Naosuké, hereditary feudal lord of Hikoné, but by providence in the position of Tairō, or military dictator. It was fortunate, indeed, for the future relations of the United States and Japan, and for the entire development of the Far East under European influences, that an American of such patience, kindliness, tactful simplicity, and sincere moral and religious principle, met at the very critical point of time a Japanese of such knightly qualities of honour, fearlessness, and self-centred force of character. ”

“ It is plain, then, that if the Japanese Protectorate is to be made really effective for the industrial uplift and development of the Korean people, as well as capable of rewarding Japan for its expenditure in substantial ways, the resources of the country must be intelligently explored and systematically developed. Here is where the work of reform must begin. In intimate relations with this work stands, of course, the establishment of a sound and stable currency. For the financial condition of Korea up to very recent times was as disgraceful as its industrial condition was deplorable. ”

“ If any honest intention is ever really formed to keep the promises, to be true to the protestations and pledges made on such occasions, it is habitually scattered to the winds by the next impure breath which blows upon him. A master of intrigue himself (an intrigue of the Korean type [152] which combines as, perhaps, nowhere else in the world the unmixed elements of a tenuous subtlety and a fatuous silliness) , the Emperor of Korea is also the victim and willing subject of intriguing eunuchs, concubines, sorceresses, Yang-bans, and unscrupulous and unsavory foreign adventurers. ”

“ Its leaders, whether in educational circles or in the army and navy, in civil service, and largely, too, in business, are becoming convinced that the “spirit” of Japan must be revived, retained, made more comprehensive, purified, elevated; if the triumphs of war are to be followed by the wished-for successes in the ensuing peace. Thus in Korea, as everywhere from Nagasaki to Sapporo, in primary schools, commercial schools, and in the university, I found the interest of the Japanese in ethical subjects supreme. ”

“ There has never been any such thing as Korean law, under which justice can be administered impartially. But, according to the constitution of Japan, no Japanese subject of His Imperial Majesty, as well as no other foreigners resident in Korea, can be deprived of property, or of liberty, otherwise than by due process of law. Nor is my relation to the administration of justice in Korea like that of the British magistrate in British India. With Korean affairs, purely internal, when the attempt is made to settle them in Korean fashion, I have no right, under the treaty, to interfere. ”

“ Can an honest and efficient Korean official class be secured, trained, and supported by the nation? Can that middle class—which is in all modern nations the source of the controlling economic and moral factors—be constituted out of the body of the Korean people? And, finally, can the great multitude, the Korean populace, be made more intelligent, law-abiding, and morally sound?
As to the purification of the Court at Seoul under the ex-Emperor, and so far as his influence could be extended—such a thing was found impossible by the Resident-General. ”